


Agent Carolina and the Sarcophagus Mission

by anneapocalypse



Series: The Meta: Essays on Red vs. Blue [3]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Meta, Nonfiction, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 06:21:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17218598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: For more on framing and how it tends to override the rest of the text in visual media, I highly recommend watchingLindsay Ellis’s video essay on Mikaela Banes in theTransformersmovies; it’s an excellent introduction to the topic.@falling-towards-the-skywas kind enough to edit togetherthis supercut of the Sarcophagus missionwith the “Who cares who gets it first?” dialogue removed. If you’re interested in looking at this topic further I highly recommend giving it a full watch, but if you’re in a hurry you canstart at the 17 minute markto see the re-framing of the end chase sequence specifically. Consider how the removal of that dialogue changes how Carolina’s actions appear—notably, that her order for York to bail out closely follows Maine being wounded while trying to protect the briefcase and her.





	Agent Carolina and the Sarcophagus Mission

## Or, everything Carolina did on the Sarcophagus mission was appropriate in the context of a military setting and her position in Project Freelancer.

Yeah, I said that.

Buckle in, kids. We’re going for a ride.

 **Disclaimer** : This is not a “Carolina has done nothing wrong, ever, in her life” post. I have [many posts](http://anneapocalypse.tumblr.com/rvbmeta) in which I have discussed her flaws, her weaknesses, and her mistakes, and that’s going to happen in this post as well. This is not about putting forth Carolina as a flawless person or a perfect leader. 

What I do intend to do here is place Carolina’s actions on one particular mission in their proper context: the context of the military generally and Project Freelancer specifically. In doing so, I mean to demonstrate that her actions, in that context, were not inappropriate.

As always, these are my personal opinions based on my best interpretation of canon. You can disagree with me and I welcome discussion but I ask that you at least meet me halfway and provide examples from the text, as I have done.

* * *

Let’s start from the beginning: the briefing.

Now, some fans love to lay any issues with the team assignments on Carolina, which I find rather odd, as it is already established that it is _Alpha_ who is determining deployments, and some of the tactics as well. When the Counselor questions the team deployed to the Bjørndal facility in the very beginning of season 9, the Director says, “The system will determine what is best, Counselor; the system will determine the order.” Before Carolina gives her team the briefing for the Sarcophagus mission, we see the Director discussing the mission plans, not with Carolina, but with Alpha. From these two scenes, it seems pretty clear that Alpha was making some decisions, and Carolina was working within certain parameters that she was given.

I would also like to note that [Carolina is still number one at this time](https://anneapocalypse.tumblr.com/post/34076727199/rvb-reference-the-pf-leaderboard). Just so there’s  _no confusion whatsoever,_  the Director himself says to the entire squad, “As our number one, Carolina will be leading from the field.”

You know who isn’t on the board at all at this time? Agent Texas.

You know who isn’t at the briefing? Agent Texas.

You know who isn’t on Carolina’s mission roster, never mind assigned to a team and given a task that Carolina even knows about? Agent Texas.

Put a pin in that. We’ll get to that later.

* * *

I’ve occasionally seen criticism of Carolina’s decision to let York join them on the mission, but even given York’s difficulties with the lock, I have a hard time seeing that as a bad call considering [how much York contributes to the success of the mission](https://anneapocalypse.tumblr.com/post/166474300146/its-easy-to-pick-on-york-for-botching-his-one-job). As for the lockpicking itself—given Wash’s dubious response to being assigned as backup, it’s highly probable that York at only 50% of his best is still a better lockpick than Wash, especially given that the holographic lock was a surprise even to York. York trips the alarm, but he does get them in. We can’t know whether Wash would’ve been able to accomplish even that; he’s a highly skilled soldier, but lockpicking isn’t his specialty.

The alarm is the first hitch in the mission, and Team A handles that deftly enough. It’s Carolina’s quick and creative thinking that finds a solution to get the crate to the roof, and as she does so, she uses each member of her team appropriately, with a clear awareness of their differing skill sets. York arguably seems to be a bit distracted working near Carolina, so she sends him to set trackers and find an exit; thus, York is able to alert them to approaching enemies and then finds the window-washing rig on the roof. Maine’s, ah, physical advantages allow them to use the rig to move the crate. Wash, Carolina keeps at her side because he is almost certainly the best mid-range marksman on the team and thus the best one to help hold their position while they move the crate. You can pick on the lineup of Team B all you want, but Team A seems to have been designed for success. Everyone on that team has a unique skill set and serves a vital role.

And yes, Carolina does show off some fancy moves during the battle in the vault. But she does _not_  do so to the detriment of the mission or any of her teammates. She knows her team well enough to effectively utilize each of their strengths, as well as her own—and what she does _works._

* * *

It’s on the roof that the first real wrench is thrown in the mission, when Team A runs into Agent Texas.

I don’t think they were supposed to run into Tex here. It’s possible that, as with the oil platform, they weren’t supposed to know Tex was deployed at all, and that’s why Tex remains silent, refusing to answer any of Carolina’s questions. Carolina starts putting the pieces together pretty quickly anyway; _she_ remembers being dropped in on other missions as backup, and if the Bjørndal mission is representative, she would intervene only as a last resort. So why is Tex here? When the team find themselves surrounded by enemy soldiers on the roof, it’s Carolina and York who get them out of it, York successfully distracting the leader while Carolina slips into camo. Tex clearly is not there to rescue them, because she doesn’t do that. She joins in once Carolina starts taking out enemy soldiers, and she’s the one to kick the sarcophagus off the roof, but at no point does she check to make sure Team A is all right, just grabs a jetpack for herself and leaps. It’s pretty clear that “Help the team” was not in Tex’s orders.

And, you know, the Director fires (what is probably) a MAC round from orbit at the building where his daughter and several of his top agents are—and I’m not joking when I say I’ve seen people blame Carolina and the other Freelancers for that orbital bombing, even though it’s made very clear that none of them knew the Director was going to do this, and in fact Carolina’s “Is that a bomb?” when she spots the transmitter sounds just short of horrified.

Luckily, the Freelancers have a great pilot with a damn near magical ability to be in the right place at the right time, and that ability seems to have rubbed off on the team heavy. Also, this planet apparently has pretty weak gravity. 

Anyway, what’s the first thing Carolina does when they’re back on solid ground? She radios North, the leader of Team B, to check their status. That’s when she learns that Team B has utterly failed their objective and are pinned down, wounded, and taking fire.

And Carolina, who is of course so hyper-competitive, selfish, and tunnel-visioned that she places the objective above the welfare of her squad, heads straight for Team B’s objective to take advantage of their failure for her own personal glory, and—

Oh. Wait.

That’s not what happens. 

That’s not what happens _at all_.

Carolina says, “We’ll be right there.”

Yep. She knows exactly how important this mission is, she knows exactly how critical the timing is, she knows that a wild card has been dropped into this mission in the form of the mysterious new agent who is not on the leaderboard and about whom she knows next to nothing—

and her first priority is _still_  getting to Team B and making sure they’re okay.

It is _North_  who objects, saying, “Negative! Get the package! Get it out of the city.”

And _only then_  does Carolina roger that and direct her team to the secondary objective, trusting North’s judgment and his ability to get _his_  team out alive. _Only_ after hearing it from North himself.

So Team A (minus Wash, who’s already been picked up by Niner) rushes to head the car off at the pass (”Head ‘em off at the pass? I hate that cliche.”) and Maine finishes the job quick and dirty. 

Now they just need to make it to extraction. And this is where things get messy: that freeway sequence. At this point, their enemies are in pursuit and holding the briefcase becomes the main concern.

This is where Tex intervenes—and this was _clearly _planned. Tex radios the ship and has the Director fire an ordnance pod to her location—a pod that contains a _motorcycle_ , and which had to have been prepared ahead of time. Tex went into this mission prepared to intervene on the freeway if needed. _Somebody_ —and whether it’s Tex or the Director is really left up to interpretation but I lean heavily toward the latter—decided that it was necessary.

All of which is fine, except for one major problem:

The Director never tells Carolina this.

At no point does _the Director_ , Carolina’s command, tell her that Tex has been deployed on this mission at all, never mind give her an order to stand down. The person who tells Carolina to stand down is _Tex_ —and here’s where we come back to that rank problem.

Tex is not on the leaderboard.

Tex has no rank.

Tex has no authority over Carolina. Not by standard military protocol, and not by the unique ranking system used within Project Freelancer.

Carolina is still number one, and thus, the ranking leader on this mission, and the _only person_  from whom Carolina is obliged to take orders is the Director. There is absolutely _no reason_ for Carolina to defer to this newcomer with _no rank_ , no authority, who has not even been briefed with her team, or worked with them at all.

Carolina is responsible for this mission. If the mission fails, it is _her fault_ , because _she_ is the ranking leader and _that’s how the military works._

And here’s where we need to look past the framing to understand what’s actually happening: we, the viewers, know that Tex is capable of achieving the objective because we know who Tex is. We’re inclined to be sympathetic to Tex and her demand that Carolina stand down because we know Tex, and we know that at least as far as completing a mission, she can be trusted.

Carolina does not know this, and even if she did, she _still_  has no reason to disregard the chain of command. In fact, it would be highly irregular for her to do so.

Yet the dialogue between Carolina and York places the emphasis on Carolina’s _personality_  rather than on the context of military protocol. “Don’t let her grab it first!” “Who cares who gets it first?” “I do.” It’s worth noting, too, that prior to Tex’s interference, Carolina appears unconcerned with who on her team has the objective physically in hand; it’s Maine that she allows to both acquire and protect the briefcase, until he is wounded. In fact the only reason their opponents get the case back in the first place is because Maine bodily blocks a sniper shot from taking out Carolina, and is briefly knocked out—and Carolina responds in kind by defending _him_  later in the same scene as they fight together on the flatbed. Right up until the end chase sequence, _everything_  that Carolina does on this mission is with a team mentality.

But because of that brief exchange of dialogue with York, it is Carolina’s competitiveness that the audience remembers at the end of this sequence, rather than what actually happened. (The Freelancer seasons do this a _lot,_  framing Carolina by what York says about her, even when it’s at odds with the context of her actions, and if you’re not interesting in looking at Carolina through the York Lens at all times, it’s _really annoying.)_

Carolina undertakes an extremely high-risk chase to secure the secondary objective. She does this herself, rather than asking any of her team to do it, both because she wants to win and because she is the only one left on her team who _can_. Wash and Maine have already been extracted; the only person Carolina even has  _left_  is York, and York has a bad eye, no speed unit and no grappling gun. There’s no conceivable way that York could’ve followed Carolina through the chase that ensues, where she’s not only moving at super speed but swinging between buildings by her grappling hook.

Tactically, going solo here is the right call. It’s the _only_  call.

And had Tex not interfered, it’s entirely possible Carolina would have succeeded in re-acquiring the objective on her own. Given the moves she pulls off in this end sequence, it’s not at all implausible to say she would’ve found a way to bring down that Hornet.

Am I saying that Carolina’s motives were pure and selfless? No, of course not. She _is_ extremely competitive and she wants not just to carry out the mission but to maintain her position as the leader (and the effects of basing squad leadership on a system so tenuous it can shift at any moment at the whims of the Director and forcing teammates to essentially fight each other for that position such that even a difficult training match could cause a squad member to lose rank could be an essay in itself). She’s understandably not real keen on the prospect of Tex swooping in and stealing her victory out from under her. 

And that’s exactly what Tex does. As [@seekerwing4](https://tmblr.co/m7qxPC3QORG8vrDQm_C2_zw) [recently pointed out](http://seekerwing4.tumblr.com/post/170232713894/okay-so-i-made-a-post-on-a-different-blog-that-a), Carolina and her team do the vast majority of the work to complete this mission, and they take the beating for it too—both Team A and Team B have wounded, including Carolina herself. But because it is Tex who picks up the briefcase at the end, leaving Carolina limping across the freeway without so much as an offer of help, Tex receives the credit, and the reward: the number one spot.

* * *

The Sarcophagus mission shows us the beginning of Carolina’s downward spiral in the Freelancer seasons, but I think many viewers misunderstand just what _happens_ to Carolina on this mission. Yes, she is competitive. You can criticize her _motives_  for not being pure and wholesome and selfless, if you must. But that doesn’t mean that her _actions_  were wrong. Carolina did everything she was supposed to do on this mission. She made sure that both objectives were completed, while looking out for the welfare of her team. The mission was a success. Everyone came home alive.

It’s Tex who acted outside the chain of command, outside the rules and protocols that would have been second nature for anyone in the military.

And Tex is rewarded for that.

And _that_ , I would argue, is what begins Carolina’s spiral. Not simply the inception of their rivalry, not simply being bumped down the board, but the lesson the Director taught Carolina when he _deliberately_ undermined her leadership, and _rewarded_ Tex for openly challenging her in the field.

And let me be clear: I don’t blame Tex for any of this. I’m of the view that Tex initially believed her rivalry with Carolina was a friendly one, and I also think the Director isolated her from the squad to a degree that she didn’t fully understand how she came across to them. I also think her later frustration with Carolina, from her perspective, is justified. 

None of this is Tex’s fault _or_  Carolina’s. It’s _entirely_  the Director’s.

Imagine how much more smoothly things might have gone if Tex had only been allowed to train with the rest of the squad, to be briefed with them, to work _with_ them rather than against them.

Instead, in what we can only assume is a deliberate choice by the Director, Carolina and Tex are pitted against each other, and this lack of communication from above arguably does far more to jeopardize the mission _and_ the squad’s safety than anything Carolina does individually.

Furthermore, by his actions, the Director tells Carolina that the rules are to be broken, and that he intends to reward _not_  strong leadership and teamwork, but lone-wolfing and going off the books.

Carolina does exactly that throughout the latter half of season 10, _because that is what she has been told will be rewarded._  That is what she has been shown, again and again, that her command wants.

* * *

There is no such thing as a purely objective reading of anything. We all bring our own experiences and biases to the table, myself included. But taking the framing at face value without considering whether it lines up with the rest of the text is not a neutral reading, either. It’s simply accepting the biases inherent in the framing, rather than questioning them. And that’s why, when I’m analyzing characters, I try as much as possible to cut through the framing and get to the raw text of the canon material, and build my interpretations from there.

I’m not saying my interpretation is gospel. I’m simply asking viewers to try and cut through the often-skewed framing and our own unexamined biases (such as that contempt and revulsion response many of us are conditioned to have toward women who are ambitious and not outwardly warm or nurturing), and to look at what is actually happening on the screen. To look at characters’ actions for what they _are_ , not as they are _framed_.

And if you still believe that Carolina acted wrongly on this mission, that’s your prerogative. I would only ask you, if you’re going to argue the point, to consider what, exactly, she did wrong, what she should have done differently, and how she should have known to act differently based on the information she currently had. I would ask you to consider _actions,_  not abstract personality traits that you personally find distasteful. (You might even consider whether you feel similarly toward male characters who take similar actions, or whether you find those personality traits equally distasteful in male characters.)

* * *

In conclusion: in the context of the military and of Project Freelancer, and in giving the text of the show the closest and most accurate reading I can, I see no evidence that Carolina acted wrongly or inappropriately on this particular mission. She did exactly what she had every reason to believe was expected of her. It was the unspoken shift in those expectations, and her struggle to keep up with them, that would ultimately come close to destroying her. 

**Author's Note:**

> For more on framing and how it tends to override the rest of the text in visual media, I highly recommend watching [Lindsay Ellis’s video essay on Mikaela Banes in the _Transformers_  movies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKyrUMUervU); it’s an excellent introduction to the topic.
> 
> [@falling-towards-the-sky](https://tmblr.co/m2OAj1vhBCoCfIrjjN_z7bA) was kind enough to edit together [this supercut of the Sarcophagus mission](https://anneapocalypse.tumblr.com/post/171698471731/falling-towards-the-sky-a-video-to-complement) with the “Who cares who gets it first?” dialogue removed. If you’re interested in looking at this topic further I highly recommend giving it a full watch, but if you’re in a hurry you can [start at the 17 minute mark](https://youtu.be/rEMowaV2yto?t=17m) to see the re-framing of the end chase sequence specifically. Consider how the removal of that dialogue changes how Carolina’s actions appear—notably, that her order for York to bail out closely follows Maine being wounded while trying to protect the briefcase and her.


End file.
